CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: It`s a stirring thing to watch. We`ve seen a bit of it before from people who turn out to be our leaders. That`s hardball for now. Thanks for being with us. “ALL IN” with Chris Hayes starts right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for.

HAYES: Drawing the battle lines.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You don`t give power to an angry left-wing mob. And that`s what they`ve become.

HAYES: Tonight, as the party of Trump paints the majority of Americans as an angry mob, new evidence their campaign is not working. Plus –

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You stick a finger in their chest and give them a few choice words.

HAYES: Then, new questions about a Russian bank`s connections to Trump Tower. And as Nikki Haley leaves –

NIKKI HALEY, UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO UNITED NATION: Now, the United States is respected.

HAYES: Just how respected is America in the world?

TRUMP: As Nikki said, the world is really respecting the United States again.

HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Good evening from New York I`m Chris Hayes. We are now 28 days from the Midterms and Republicans and Trump T.V. have their message. They are not running on tax cuts or health care or really anything they`ve done while they`ve had unified control of government. What they are running on is that they are the last line of defense against you, the angry mob, otherwise known as the majority of the country that disagrees with Republicans.

SEBASTIAN GORKA, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT: There is only one party that has normalized violence in America in the last two years and it`s not the Republicans.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: That is a mob rule.

JEANINE PIRRO, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: With this mob rule.

Mob rule? That`s a mob rule.

HANNITY: Basically mob rule. No law and order. Do you want mob rule?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, the average citizen, if you`re on the right, should be concerned and in danger.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: How do you keep the base fired up when you`ve just won again? Play it like you`re the victim and constantly under attack. It`s essentially the mission statement over at Trump T.V. where Tucker Carlson spends a truly remarkable amount of time each and every night trying to scare his viewers with warnings of an out-of-control and violent left, occasionally plucking out random tweets to illustrate it. And look at those Chiron`s, it`s kind of his thing.

But don`t be mistaken it`s because they see this strategy as a political winner in the wake of the Kavanaugh protests. Take this scene as reported by The Washington Post when thousands of furious screaming protesters march towards the Capitol. As Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed, Republican staffers peered out at the scene from the windows above. They were not alarmed but elated. There has been some evidence that the Kavanaugh fight energized the GOP base, at least in the short term but there`s also evidence that when people get really, really mad at you, you`re probably losing.

Remember back in 2009 spurred by lies about ObamaCare death panels and pulling the plug on grandma, the Tea Party angrily protested and invaded town halls to confront even yell at scream at Democratic lawmakers. This was incidentally before the right suddenly became so concerned about “mob rule.” But here`s the thing. In the subsequent Midterm Election, Democrats lost 63 seats on their way to losing the House. All that right-wing anger had consequences and it looks at least at this point like this anger just might as well.

According to a new poll, Democrats now have a 13-point edge in the generic House ballot 54 to 41. Republicans seem to think that their last best hope to limit the damage is to convince their base that if they don`t vote they will find themselves at the mercy of an angry mob of pitchfork-wielding liberals. Joining me now someone very familiar with these tactics, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Democrat of California who`s being a target of Trump T.V. and the President this summer when she encouraged supporters to push back on the Trump administration officials in public,

Congresswoman, you`ve seen Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley and others in the wake of all these protesters in the Senate saying basically this is mob rule, we`re being literally assaulted in the words of Mitch McConnell. What do you think about that?

REP. MAXINE WATERS (D), CALIFORNIA: Well, I think it`s absolutely ridiculous and it is not believable. As a matter of fact this country was built on peaceful protests and those of us who were part of the civil rights movement who understood the power of protests taught by Dr. Martin Luther King and others know that we cannot allow Donald Trump in anybody else to take protests away from us and to deem it to be violent and to try and make us look like a mob.

It is because of peaceful protests not only in the civil rights movement but the labor movement was able to get better wages, able to get better working conditions, able to get better pay, everything because they learn to March and protest and they still do it today. We know that protest is guaranteed to a Democratic Society. We know that this is guaranteed to us by the Constitution. They`re trying to change the description of protest and call it a mob.

Well, this president is the poster boy for what a mob protester looks like. He is, as a matter of fact, he`s the one who has been violent in his speech. He`s the one in his rallies have said things like this: I`d like to punch him in the face. Trump said that at one of his rallies. He said knock the crap out of them, would you and seriously OK, just knock the hell. I mean, I promise I will pay the legal fees. That`s the kind of talk that he is done. That`s violent talk. We don`t have that kind of talk that has come from the women who are protesting.

As a matter of fact, this country is past due for the kind of protests that we have seen women do in the last few days as we have gone through this confirmation process of Kavanaugh. It is time for women to say that we`re tired of being disrespected. We`re tired of being you know, called out of our names etcetera, etcetera. And of course, this sexual assault that so many have gotten away with for so long is over.

The MeToo Movement have gotten us started, the marches that we`ve been doing. We`re not going to back down. You`re not going to intimidate us. You`re not going to frighten us. You`re not going to take away our right to stand up for ourselves. And guess, what while they`re trying to say to families, you got to be worried about your boys. Families know, families know, first of all, they`ve got to be worried about all of their children but they also understand if their daughters are to grow up and to have careers and to have confidence and to be able to realize their full potential, now is the time to embrace them and stand with them as they push back on the abuse of power by people like the President of the United States and McConnell.

They have abused their power. I`ve never seen anything like this before. They have run over us. They have refused to respect Dr. Ford. They refuse to bring forth the witnesses that are knocking down the doors of the FBI saying let me come and tell you about what was happening with Kavanaugh not only in high school but in college. And so we`re not going to allow them to take this false message that they`re trying to carry to the American people trying to make them believe that we`re an angry mob.

We`re not going to let him get away with that. This president will try anything and he will change the conversation if we allow him. But now we know we can push back on it.

HAYES: Let me – let me ask you as something – I want you to respond to something that Hillary Clinton said that I thought was notable. And she`s someone obviously who has a reputation in the United States Senate as a first lady for bipartisanship. She`s worked with people across the aisle. This is what she had to say about the Republican Party right now and civility. Take a listen.

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CLINTON: You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That`s why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that`s when civility can start again. But until then the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: What do you think of that?

WATERS: Well, I like that. And listen, I understand and I know what protest is all about. Of course, it will make others feel comfortable but you don`t go around saying, may I please protest you? No. You gather your strength and you take it to where it has to go and you will make people uncomfortable. That`s what changes is all about.

HAYES: But people – I want to be clear on this because there are people who hear that and they think what you`re calling for is physical intimidation, things that fray at the social fabric that then make people cower the possibility of violence, of setting someone off who is perhaps unwell. I want you to respond to that concern.

WATERS: Well, that is absolutely untrue. If they would like to take and redefine somehow protest and call it something else, they`ll try and do that. They`ll try and get away with that. But that is not absolutely true. You don`t hear us talking about hitting anybody, punching anybody, killing anybody. You have one of the Trump supporters that said you bet I liked it knocking the hell out of them, big mouth. The next time we see him we may need to kill him. You don`t hear us talking like that.

When we protest yes we`re shouting out, we have signs, we`re saying what we think will get to the public and we are not saying we`re going to kill anybody we`re going to hit anybody or we`re going to cause anybody in a harm, that`s a lie in the way that they`re trying to redefine protest.

HAYES: All right, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, thank you as always for making some time.

WATERS: You`re welcome.

HAYES: For more on the political landscape ahead the Midterm Elections I`m joined by by MSNBC Contributor Betsy Woodruff, Political Reporter at The Daily Beast and Dave Weigel National Political Correspondent at the Washington Post. And David, I wanted to talk to you because I remember when you and I were both covering the Tea Party back in 2009 and 2010, it`s a crazy kind of inverse image, lots of angry people. I remember people shouting at members of Congress right in their faces, and this was massively celebrated and stoked. There were big Fox news shows all about it, and times seem to have changed.

DAVE WEIGEL, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE WASHINGTON POST: I was flashing back to the exact same stuff. I was also flashing back a little bit to two years ago and changed when Hillary Clinton used a line she`d been using different versions up and said that half of Trump supporters were in the basket of deplorables. And what the Trump response was immediately was to take that on to still – they still use it. I remember that rally the next day were they made that the theme of the rally, that they were the deplorables. They embraced the idea that they were scary and energized.

And Hillary Clinton`s campaign made this I think attitudinal error that swing voters who weren`t comfortable with her we`re going to – we`re going to jump over because they couldn`t stand the thought of an – of an angry group of people taking over. And not that every election is going to be a mirror version of the last one but there`s this fatal conceit with I think the entire Trump presidency that the president who won 46 percent of the vote only needs to get his base angry and active and they can minimize everybody else. I think that`s just not been true over the elections, special elections we`ve seen in the last year. It`s not true in the House polling that you pointed to now.

HAYES: You know, it`s striking to me, Betsy, that here – the successes and the victories don`t seem to provide the emotional motivating force that Republicans feel that their base needs. So the Kavanaugh win or the tax cuts, it`s like it has to be that you`re under threatened, under peril is the means by which you get people invested which is why we`re seeing this sort of rhetoric.

BETSY WOODRUFF, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: That`s a fact with which the Trump campaign is intimately acquainted. If you talk to people in Ted Cruz`s orbit who are close to Cruz`s 2016 presidential candidacy, some of them will tell you that the moment when they saw Trump`s poll numbers really break away from Ted Cruz`s, when they saw Trump`s numbers go up and Cruz`s go down was the night in March of 2016 when protesters in Chicago mobilized and kept Trump from being able to have a rally in that city.

Cruz folks will tell you that when that protest happened, a number of Republican primary voters saw it, Fox News covered the whole saying live wall-to-wall coverage, Republican primary voters saw it and they decided whoever these people are protesting must be doing something right and that`s a big part of the reason. It`s obviously not the whole reason. But it`s a really important moment for understanding why Trump did as well as he did with Republican primary voters. And that`s part of the reason that people in Trump`s orbit right now are surprisingly delighted to see some of these protests.

It`s a really interesting paradox that the protests we`re seeing from people who are deeply concerned about the Trump presidency simultaneously bring a lot of – a lot of a heartening and enthusiasm to the left but also perplexingly enough give Trump potentially an opening to go after his biggest critic.

HAYES: Yes. I think there`s always a sort of bank-shot reasoning right. Well, if the people I don`t like are angry, then the thing they`re angry at must be good and I think that that can apply in lots of places. But there`s also the fact, Dave, I think you`ve covered grassroots politics as well as anyone in the country honestly. It`s flying around tons of different races, talking to tons of organizers. I saw you do with the Tea Party and I`ve seen you do it now. And one of the lessons I`ve learned from your reporting is anger equals activation and organizing. Like, it`s not just people are angry. There is a lot going on among people in opposition to the Trump administration in the Republican Party.

WEIGEL: There is. And everything Betsy said was right. I`d emphasize again that was a Republican primary electorate and that`s been an issue with this administration is that they are intimately concerned with whether Republicans are excited to vote and thinking a little bit less about adding independence on to that. The idea that independence be alienated by these protests, it`s something they`ve been trying for 18 months.

When Jon Ossoff was running for Congress in Georgia, he was running up about the most mellow campaign you could imagine. And a lot of the attack ads focused on how you know, Antifa and group – J20 groups have protested the inauguration. So they had footage people throwing bricks in the windows, setting things on fire. That was going to be part of the message into this election. And I`ve seen – I`ve seen it in direct mail all the time. So it was going to be part of the message.

What I think was striking about the protest last week is I think some of them looked a little bit ridiculous from – if you`re a – if you`re neutral in this, you see somebody banging on the door of the Supreme Court yelling, no. That feels a bit like a tantrum. They were not violent. There`s no – there was no car set on fire. There was no one punched. There were some people made fun of in ways that were – that were mean but this was not the collapse of order. It was just a lot messier what we see.

There`s a lot like the 2011 protests in Wisconsin which I know Betsy and you – and you both covered very well. Republicans remember that as the moment that they took back the state. They energized the party. They did. They also lost Wisconsin two years later and only picked it up with Donald Trump. Those – the dynamics of having a lot of angry people in the streets. Now if they`re all doing something violent in this and counterproductive, that`s one thing.

The people I know at this protest and I know if I`ve been covered them really literally flew back from D.C. to their States to go knock on doors and they were 10 times as energized they were.

HAYES: That to me is the big question.

WEIGEL: Right.

HAYES: And part of the – part of the story I kept hearing from Republicans was if Kavanaugh goes down, you will – you will deflate the Republican base, Betsy. But it`s also the case that I just feel like the way the news cycle is right? Like, the election 30 days from now, like something`s got to sustain that activation and that seems to me what the message mongers on the right are trying to find that will keep people pumped up.

WOODRUFF: I was chatting with a well-connected Republican political operative a little bit earlier this who said that generally speaking the view from Republicans in Washington is that the Kavanaugh confirmation just is not any sort of major game changer when it comes to the midterm elections. I don`t think any serious Republicans who are familiar with good data are under the impression that it`s making things substantially or statistically significantly easier for them. And that`s part of the reason that we`re now seeing so many Republicans as you`re video montage showed almost unofficially highlight the fact that people on the Left are really mobilized and protesting in ways that are extremely visible.

And I think Congresswoman Waters made a very important point to you a few moments ago which is that these kinds of protests make people uncomfortable. And for Conservatives, for people on the Right, for people in Trump`s orbit looking not necessarily to court independence but solely to mobilize their base voters, that discomfort can be politically weaponized and that`s what we`re seeing Trump and his associates try really hard to do as we go into the final weeks before the midterms.

HAYES: All right, Betsy Woodruff and Dave Weigel, thank you both for being with me.

WOODRUFF: Sure thing.

WEIGEL: Thank you.

HAYES: Still to come, I`ll talk to Beto O`Rourke about his fight to unseat Ted Cruz and why today a month before the midterms could be decisive in his attempt to turn Texas blue. Beto O`Rourke joins me in two minutes.

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HAYES: The state of Texas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since Forrest Gump was the number one movie in the country. Senate candidate Bet0 O`Rourke is trying like hell to change that. And if he does, you might look back on today as the moment that made it happen. And that is because today is the last day to register to vote in the State of Texas. This year has seen a surge in registered voters, a jump of 1.6 million since the last time Texas held a midterm election in 2014.

O`Rourke now trails Ted Cruz by just five points in the latest polling though some have him closer. And a super PAC has released this ad directed by Oscar Nominee Richard Linklater attacking Cruz.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Somebody left something on my door the other day. It said Ted Cruz tough as Texas. I mean come on if somebody called my wife a dog and said my daddy was in on the Kennedy assassination, I wouldn`t be kissing their ass. You stick a finger in their chest and give them a few choice words or you drag their ass out by the woodshed and kick their ass, Ted. Come on, Ted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Joining me now is Texas Congressman and Democratic Senate Candidate Bet0 O`Rourke. And Congressman I should be clear that you do not approve that message. That is an independent group spending on your behalf.

REP. BET0 O`ROURKE (D), TEXAS: Yes. That`s not our stuff. I`m not down with super PACs. We`re running this one with people. No PACs, no special interests, no outside interests, go into every one of the 254 counties of Texas. Today at Texas Southern University here in Houston, after that at Rice, yesterday at Lone Star Community College. We are with people especially people who`ve been counted out or written off. Young people who aren`t expected to vote. We`re there with them so that their stories become part of why we`re campaigning and what we deliver on.

And I tell you what, when we win, they`re going to be a big part of the reason that we do. They are the leaders of this moment and they`re showing up and they`re registering as you just said and they`re making a commitment to vote on October 22nd, our first day of early voting in Texas.

HAYES: So you just did this college tour. So part of the problem for Democrats is that Texas, when you look at it from a sort of 30,000-foot view, it seems like the vote should be there to win statewide for Democrat. But turnout in Texas has been among the worst in the country. This is a Washington Post analysis. If you look at 2006, 2010, and 2014, it`s at the very bottom with voter turnout in midterms around 30 percent. What is your understanding of why that is?

O`ROURKE: So don`t take my word for it. The courts four times last year found that people have been drawn out of their congressional districts based on their race and ethnicity, drawn out of a reason to vote, drawn out of their democracy. Now, the onus is on us to transcend that, give everyone a reason to vote, hence, showing up in every county and showing up within every community, within every county, write nobody off, taking no one for granted, giving everyone a reason to vote and help to set the expectations to which I`m going to perform in the Senate.

And you see that on these college campuses, you see that in the third ward or cashmere garden here in Houston. You see it in every community we go to. Going to the Rio Grande Valley where you`ve been, in Edinburgh, and Weslaco, and San Benito, and McAllen, Brownsville listening to those who`ve been taken for granted for too long and hence haven`t shown up to vote. We`re showing up for them right now in this – go ahead.

HAYES: Yes, let me just – because those are places – the places you just mentioned are actually some of the lowest turnouts in the State of Texas which is already a low turnout state, right? Those places you just mentioned particularly round the – around the border of the Rio Grande Valley, what do you tell them about why it matters for them to vote for you to send you to Washington and not Ted Cruz that is tangible to deliver back to them?

O`ROURKE: A couple of things that have come up in these town hall meetings especially along the border. Ted Cruz has promised to deport every single DREAMer. I say, free DREAMers from any fear of deportation by making them U.S. citizens. Let`s keep families together. Let`s never take another child from another parent at their most desperate and vulnerable moment. And let`s insist that every child who`s in a foster care home in Michigan who`s in a tent city and Tornillo be reunited with their parents immediately.

Let`s rewrite our immigration laws in our own image to reflect what we know to be true. Those cities of the border cities like El Paso my hometown, one of the safest in United States of America. Not in spite of but because of the fact that we are cities of immigrants. Nothing to wall off or militarize or be defensive about or apologize for. It`s the example that we have set that can help lead this country in the right direction. I tell you what, never a better time to be on or from the border. The people on the border want to lead. But we need to show up and make sure that their leadership is included in this campaign and then in our service.

HAYES: You know, I think the Ted Cruz play here and I`m curious what you think this campaign is about, right, if you were to say what the one issue is. It seems to me that he thinks that he can kind of get you on cultural issues, that Texas is a Conservative state, and he`s a Conservative and he can kind of push you away like that. On the issues, what do you see is the top issues in this race in terms of substance between the two of you, things you stand for, things he opposes?

O`ROURKE: Healthcare is a great example because I hear about that in every single county no matter how red or how blue. We`re the least insured state in the United States of America, number one provider of mental health care services, the county jail system. Ted Cruz has insisted that we repeal every single word of the Affordable Care Act including protections for pre-existing conditions. I want to expand Medicaid, offer Medicare as a choice on the exchanges. Get to universal guaranteed high-quality health care for every single man, woman, and child. There could not be a greater difference than that one.

On immigration, he wants to deport the DREAMers. I want them here as U.S. citizens. I want to make sure that we have a legal path to citizenship for those who want to come out of the shadows and be with their families. Criminal justice reform, I know that we have a school to prison pipeline that begins as early as kindergarten. I want to make sure that we have equity and education, that we end the war on drugs, that we end the prohibition on marijuana, that we expunge the arrest records for those who served time for possession of a substance that`s legal and so much of the rest of this country so they can get on with their lives, work a job, go to school, better themselves. These are the issues of substance that people are asking me about wanting us to lead on.

HAYES: Let me get you on the record on Judge Kavanaugh. Would you have voted to confirm him?

O`ROURKE: I would not have. We`re 50th in the country as you said and voter turnout by design, on purpose. Some people not intended to vote. We need a Supreme Court Justice who believes in voting rights. In a state where you can be fired for being gay, a Supreme Court Justice who believes in civil rights. A state that`s the epicenter of the maternal mortality crisis, a Justice who believes in a woman`s right to make her own decision about her own body and have access to the healthcare that ensures that she can.

He fails the bar on each and every single one of those tests so the next justice to be nominated can only be confirmed if he or importantly she can meet those qualifications. I`m going to make sure that we hold the President to that bar for each and every single one of those issues.

HAYES: Congressman Beto O`Rourke whose voice shows you just how hard he`s working. Thank you very much for making time.

O`ROURKE: Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

HAYES: Coming up, renewed questions about connections between a Russian bank and the Trump Org. I`ll talk to one of the reporters that originally uncover that story about the latest updates to it right after this.

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HAYES: About a week before the 2016 election, journalist Franklin Foer published an explosive story in Slate on suspicious web traffic between a domain tied to the Trump organization and a major Russian bank.

The bank and the Trump campaign both neither report (ph) which was so provocative and the data behind it so murky that a lot of people, including us at All In, decided to keep our distance. It did not help that on the same exact day Slate published that story the New York Times printed this misleading and now infamous headline “Investigating Donald Trump, FBI Sees No Clear Link to Russia”.

Now almost two years later with the mystery of whether the Trump campaign criminally conspired with Russia still unsolved, “The New Yorker” is revisiting the story with and extensive investigation into that cryptic web traffic, consulting with experts who ruled out almost every benign explanation for context between a Trump server and a Russian bank.

And after a group of computer scientists analyzed the data, one of them told the magazine, quote, “We decided this was a covert communication channel.” Franklin Foer originally broke that story back in 2016. He`s now National Correspondent of The Atlantic. Natasha Bertrand is a staff writer for The Atlantic covering national security and the Muller Investigation.

Frank, let me start with you. You wrote a great piece sort of assessing The New Yorker piece and reflecting back on two years ago. And I remember that piece. I was like this is crazy but also I don`t know what to make of it and also everyone`s denying it. What did you learn? How has this story advanced in the two years since you first wrote about it?

FRANKLIN FOER, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, THE ATLANTIC: Well, it`s only marginally advanced. So when I wrote about it, I said, “Look, we have this data. It`s incredibly suspicious.” A lot of computer scientists whose job it is to protect the Internet from hacking were looking at this data in real time and they said, “There`s something really funny here that this bank in Moscow is communicating with the Trump campaign.” And there was a whole series of suspicious, very circumstantial pieces of evidence and data that suggested that it was a covert communication channel, but it was just a question.

And we`ve had this scandal - this big scandal, and there`s so many plot points in the scandal it`s hard to keep track of all the different stands. So I wrote this article and it kind of disappeared in this haze in the week before the election when everybody thought Hillary Clinton was going to be president.

And nobody really returned to it until except for the fact that behind the scenes there were other teams of computer scientists, other investigators, other people in the Senate who were saying, “This data is suspicious. We need to interrogate the data more.” And unfortunately it`s two years later.

Dexter Filkins, a great reporter, has revisited. He`s ruled out other innocuous explanations for the communication between these servers, but we still don`t know a lot of the fundamentals about the story.

HAYES: Yes, that part of it - I mean, there`s a lot of stuff. There was a response saying, “Oh, it could be this. Oh, they were pinging. It was a mass marketing email.” It was this. It was that.

FOER: Yes.

HAYES: Which I think I remember at the time I was sort of persuaded by. Again, this is all technical like, I don`t know, the DNS lookups. Filkins does a pretty good job of knocking that down, and there is this one detail that to me is so mysterious, Natasha.

So there`s the Trump domain. It had been shut down after - so The New York Times is reporting on the story. They contact the Alpha Bank, which is a Moscow bank. The domain gets shut down after the Times contacted Alpha Bank`s representatives but before the newspaper contacted Trump.

Max, who`s one of the computer scientists - it`s an alias - says that shows a human interaction. That is pretty weird.

NATASHA BERTRAND, STAFF WRITER FOR THE ATLANTIC: I mean, what more evidence do you need? It`s very, very obvious, and it`s really Occam`s razor here. The fact that we still have not been able to rule out the idea the idea that this was a covert communication channel two years after the fact, the fact that no one has come forth with a plausible explanation for why this was happening, for why Alpha Bank was one of three organizations communicating with the Trump server in those months leading up to the election is just completely remarkable.

And I think the fact that Frank`s story got overlooked or criticized as much as it did and the fact that now it`s being revisited and you have the editor of “The New York Times” saying that there was a story there just shows the lack of imagination really that we were operating with in the months leading up to the 2016 election.

I mean, at that point to see Frank`s story come out on October 31st, to see the story about the steel dossier which was also published on October 31 and which no one paid attention to because they just could not believe that this actually had any merit I think is - you know, and the fact that we now are still revisiting those two things, the steel dossier constantly over and over again and these questions about the Alpha Bank-Trump organization communication, it just shows how far we`ve come and far our - how much our imaginations have grown with regards to what the Trump campaign and Russia both were capable of in the elections.

HAYES: And yet Frank, to your point also about how much we don`t know still.

FOER: Yes.

HAYES: I mean, that`s what`s sort of maddening abut the whole thing, right? There`s just tantalizing detail after tantalizing detail. There`s all sorts of ways we know that the Russians were trying to get to the Trump campaign.

FOER: Right.

HAYES: There`s all sorts of ways we know the Trump campaign was receptive. There`s all kinds of connections. You can map them out, and yet it still feels the fundamental truth of what transpired is not presently known.

FOER: Right, so we have all this evidence, this deep, rich evidence about the motive of the various characters in the saga.

HAYES: Yes, exactly.

FOER: We have the motives of the Trumps and the people around the Trumps who were willing to collaborate with the Russians, wanted to collaborate with the Russians. We have the Russians who had this massive campaign to active try to influence the election, and everything suggests that they should have met in the middle and colluded with one another. Yet when we look for specific evidence of collusion it doesn`t quite add up to what it seems like it should be.

HAYES: Right.

FOER: And so, you have this kind of missing middle in the story, this great, gaping hole in the center. What happened there during the campaign? And really journalism has been struggling for the last two and a half years to try to get to that point.

HAYES: yes.

FOER: And we make incremental advances, but we really just haven`t been able to get to that point. That`s why the Mueller investigation is ultimately so important and that all these enigmas should be answerable given what he`s got to work with including Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort.

HAYES: Finally, Natasha, do you expect that they are still doing their thing over the Mueller team and we will hear from them more after the election?

BERTRAND: Oh, absolutely. I think the consensus now among people who are familiar with Mueller`s kind of MO is that he is keeping a low profile before the election because he doesn`t want to commit the kind of, you know, grave sin that Comey committed before the election with the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

So I think that this investigation is far from over, and I`ll just add with regard to the idea that we really don`t know still what`s going on between the Trump organization and Alpha Bank. Alpha Bank has a real knack for making reporters feel like they are the crazy one.

So if there - and trust me, I`m saying that from personal experience. They are very litigious. And so, the reason I think - part of the reason why there`s been such a delay and so many obstacles to reporting this story out is because Alpha Bank has made a consorted effort to preserve their image here in the United States and in the West, and that`s a big problem for journalists trying to uncover the truth.

HAYES: All right, Franklin Foer and Natasha Bertrand, thank you both. Still to come as Nikki Haley suddenly resigns as U.N. Ambassador, new polling shows just how little the world trusts President Trump. Some pretty alarming numbers ahead. Plus tonight Thing One, Thing Two starts next.

(COMMERICAL BREAK)

HAYES: Thing one, tonight on Twitter yesterday, the #HimToo was trending nation wide for hours. But it was not because there was some new movement starting. It was our reaction to a single tweet.

A photo of a sailor posted by his mother quote, “This is my son, he graduated number one in boot camp. He was awarded the USO award. He was number one is A school. He is a gentleman who respects women. He won`t go on solo dates due to the current climate of false sexual accusations by radical feminists with an axe to grind. I vote. #HimToo.”

The online reaction was swift and hilarious, and that`s Thing two in 60 seconds.

(COMMERICAL BREAK)

HAYES: The good people of social media love a good meme. And boy did they get a gift yesterday with the this is my son #HimToo tweet, featuring the handsome sailor. Supposedly too afraid of false accusations to date, the memes came fast and furious. These are my sons, this is my son, he won`t go on solo dates even though he never gave up, let you down, run around, or deserted you.

This is my son he graduated number one from the university of flavor town. He was awarded three banging fajitas poppers. He was number one in flaming hot crunch. This is my son, he wont go on dates with girls because it`s a giant mass of incandescent gas and therefore too hot to handle. There`s a Donald Trump Jr. addition, and this one featuring the ever lovable Steven Miller. The best reaction tweet of them all hands down was this, a recreation of the original photo by Peter Hanson, the actual Navy vet pictured in the original tweet, and he explains quote ” That was my mom, sometimes the people we love do things that hurt us with out realizing it. Let`s turn this around. I respect and #believewoman. I never have an never will support #HimToo. I`m a proud Navy vet, cat dad, and ally. Also Twitter your meme game is on point”.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIKKI HALEY, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: Look at the two years. Look at what has happened in two years with the United States on foreign policy. Now, the United States is respected. Countries may not like what we do, but they respect what we do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Part of the job or being the Trump Administration is telling obvious ridiculous lies. So, U.N. Ambassador, Nikki Haley, in announcing today she will be leaving her post at the end of the year, spoke of how respected we are after the Trump Administration`s amazing two years.

Well, a new research poll shows how America`s international image has actually taken a beating. Confidence in Trump stands at just 27 percent, no confidence at a whopping 70 percent. A (inaudible) says the U.S. is doing less to help address major global problems and 70 percent say the U.S. does little or nothing to take into account the interests of other countries.

You know who is feeling good about the Trump Administration, the (death spots) of the world, who have been given an explicit green light to do whatever they want, including our close allies and friends, the Saudi`s, who the Trump Administration has completely, thoroughly embraced, basically giving them carte blanche even as the go about starving the people of Yemen.

And now the Saudi government, it appears they have murdered and possible dismembered a Saudi dissident and U.S. resident who writes for the “Washington Post,” named Jamal Khasghoggi. He disappeared from the Saudi Consulate in Turkey a week ago and has not been seen since.

For more on that, I`m joined by Mehdi Hasan, who`s a columnist, senior contributor to “The Intercept,” host of “The Intercept” podcast, Deconstructed. And Mehdi, you interviewed Khasghoggi just a little while ago. Tell me about him.

MEHDI HASAN, BRITISH JOURNALIST: So this is a Saudi journalist, Chris, this is not some Democrat opposition member dissident, he was a Saudi journalist, respected in Saudi Arabia, a former advisor to the Saudi royal family, a member of the Establishment, Chris.

And he started writing articles critical of MBS of Mohammad Bin Salman ,the Crown Prince, Defector ruler of Saudi Arabia and he felt he had to leave, because he was being told he couldn`t write certain things. He was told he couldn`t tweet certain things, he was worried about his freedom, so he left Saudi Arabia and moved to the U.S. and became a “Washington Post” columnist.

I interviewed him a few months ago on my show that I do on Al Jazeera English. We kind of joked in the green room, Chris, beforehand, about his personal security and MBS was in town at the time, if you remember. And I was joking about, how safe would he be with the Crown Prince around in the same city.

And what`s happened in recent days is horrific. This idea that he was murdered, maybe, killed in a premeditated deliberate fashion by a Saudi hit team in Istanbul is still hard to get your head around, but that seems to be what happened.

HAYES: He – the details are that he went into the Consultant in Turkey for what appeared to be a visa issue with his wife and his – or his fianc‚. His fianc‚ waited for him, he never emerged. The Saudi`s say they`re investigating it, but all of the circumstantial evidence seems to be that they did something with him.

HASAN: Indeed. And the Turkish police and authorities are investigating the CCTV of him going in but not coming out. They have 15 Saudi`s arriving on that day and heading for the Consultant. They have a convoy of cars heading for the airport. There`s two jets, we learned today, two private jets came into the country carrying Saudis, that then flew to Egypt and the U.A. and then on to Saudi Arabia.

And, of course, the Saudi`s are saying, well you know what, he left. And then you say, well, do you have video footage of him living, CCTV? Oh, CCTV wasn`t working. We don`t have the tapes. Oh, that`s convenient. “The Guardian” is reporting today, Chris, that Turkish Consultant staff were told to go home that day. The CCTV has disappeared. I mean it does point in one direction.

The MBS, notoriously thin skinned, Chris, took out this critic. A very mild critic, which means if you can do this to a Saudi national, a mild critic of his on foreign soil, what hope does that leave for people at home who are trying to protest for freedom in Saudi Arabia?

And you know, ask the Canadians`, Chris, the Canadians did a mild tweet a few weeks ago about releasing political prisoners. The Saudi`s lost their minds, kicked out the Canadian Ambassador, cut off all commercial ties. He cannot stand any criticism, this guy, and he`s been emboldened, as you say, by Donald Trump.

HAYES: This is someone who came to the U.S., Tom Freeman wrote essentially a love letter to him, he`s this amazing reformer –

HASAN: It was nauseating.

HAYES: All of American – the American elite, I mean everyone from the Rock is having dinner with him and tweeting about him. He`s given this sort of heroes welcome, this is the guy who`s going to remake Saudi Arabia, the Trump Administration has clearly backed him foursquare, this is just part of what appears has been a real crackdown that he`s been undertaking even before this ghastly murder that he is now accused of overseeing.

HASAN: It`s not just, as you say, this is going on – he rounded up women`s rights activists and detained them. He`s rounded up scholars, clerics, businessmen, economists, he rounded up his only fellow princes and basically did a shakedown, extorted them for money, billions of dollars, and yet, he comes to the U.S., as you say, and you have Jeff Bezos, owner of “The Washington Post,” where Jamal Khashoggi wrote, laughing around and taking pictures with him.

You have Oprah and Zuckerberg and the heads of Google and all the Silicon Valley chiefs and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Michael Bloomberg, Tom Freeman, all just sucking up him and I`ve not heard a word from any of these liberals.

Forget the conservatives, liberal American media and political idiots, where is the outcry from them. I`m still waiting to hear any outcry from the about the crackdown or now about this alleged murder.

He came to the United States and was treated as if he was the JFK of the Middle East, when it turns our he`s really the new Colonel Gaddafi of the Middle East.

HAYES: Well, and here`s what strikes me about this, this is a very brazen thing to do. I mean, they know that this – they`re not going to get – they know that the people will notice this, right?

I mean there`s CCTV, the Turks are furious about this, for obvious reasons, this was done on Turkish soil, even though it was in Consultant, it strikes me that this is – you don`t do this unless you think you have the running room to do this kind of thing and not hear any consequences from your sort of most important ally, the United States.

HASAN: And this, Chris, you`re exactly right and these things, of course, when he did the roundup of his cousins and the princes. I mean this guy took power in basically a palace coup. He knocked off the former crown prince, his relative, and took over from him. He then rounded up other princes and took money from them.

You don`t do that in a key ally of the United States without getting the green light from Washington, D.C. Many would argue that his friendship with Jared Kushner has provided him with a direct line to Donald Trump, Donald Trump likes strong men. Just last week in West Virginia, he said the Saudi king, I love him, he`s a friend of mine.

He loves these – don`t forget Chris, where did Donald Trump go first, when he was elected president? The very first president not to go to Canada or Mexico, he went to Saudi to do a sword dance with the Saudi royals. He loves these guys.

So, of course, they will have gotten a green light for the crackdown, for the purge and now for this alleged murder. I can`t believe, and you look at the comments coming out of Washington, D.C., Mike Pompeo saying, the Saudi`s should conduct a thorough investigation. What? They`re going to investigate the murder they carried out, how does that make any sense?

HAYES: Yes, he disappeared in the Consultant. I keep seeing people saying there should be an investigation. It should be unhand the man –

HASAN: And there`s no CCTV. There`s now CCTV.

HAYES: Yes. Produce him or you are guilty. Mehdi Hasan, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

HASAN: Thanks Chris.

HAYES: That is “All In” for this evening. “The Rachel Maddow Show” starts right now. Good evening Rachel.

END

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